BRUNSWICK, Maine — The third time wasn’t exactly a charm for the Bangor girls swimming and diving team as the Cape Elizabeth Capers used their extraordinary freestyle depth to end the Rams’ two-year reign as Class A state champs Monday night.
The Capers churned past the competition in Bowdoin College’s Greason Pool en route to 306 meet points and their first state crown since 2003. Bangor wound up fourth with 232 points.
Morse of Bath was second with 243 and Messalonskee of Oakland third at 240. Brewer finished ninth with 103 points.
Brewer senior Jessica Hodsdon was one of three girls to win two individual events, taking state titles in both the 100-yard butterfly and winning her specialty, the 100 breaststroke, for the third straight year.
“She’s without a doubt the best female swimmer in Brewer history,” said Brewer coach Kathy Cahill. “I can’t say enough about the spirit and heart she has. She had a nagging shoulder injury that really hampered her for most of the season and we really didn’t know what to expect, but here we are.”
Bangor jumped up into a flat-footed tie with Cape Elizabeth after the 1-meter dive, the fifth event of the meet, with 126 meet points. The Rams charged into the top spot after placing all three of their divers in the top four spots and coming away with 51 points in the event.
Junior Ashley Higgins led the Rams’ diving depth with 295.6 points and a first-place finish. Her big dive earned the top seed a cou-ple of 7 scores from the judges.
“It was a reverse dive pike and I think the degree of difficulty was 1.8,” Higgins explained. “I had a couple other that were tougher, but I think it took us all awhile to adjust to the boards and the fact the south-ern judging is different from the northern judging. We were all hav-ing a little trouble early on.”
But Higgins adjusted in time.
“I was second after eight dives,” Higgins said. “This still hasn’t really hit me yet, but I can’t say how exciting this is. Seeing my mom cry when I came out of the water after my last dive was a really cool and emotional thing for me.”
The Rams chipped away for 16 more points in the 100 butterfly as freshman Meri Wicks was eighth and senior Eliza Woodcock was twelfth. That vaulted Bangor to a 142-133 lead over the Capers.
Despite only swimming the 100 fly once all season, Brewer’s Hodsdon dominated it with a time of 1 minute, 0.33 seconds to take the gold medal.
“I came into this with a 1:03 this morning, which was my best time in it. My career best is 1:02,” said Hodsdon. “So when I looked up and saw a minute, I was like ‘OK, that’s good.’ I’m psyched because I’m hoping this will get me into Y na-tionals.”
“This one is the best, I think,’ because I never expected it,” said Hodsdon, two-time defending state champ in the 100 breaststroke. “Coach asked me if I wanted to do 100 free or 100 fly and I chose the fly. Guess I made the right choice.”
As hard as the Rams’ charge was in the first half of the meet, the Ca-pers had a proportional response in the seventh and eight events (100 and 500 free). Cape scored a whop-ping 58 points by placing four in the top nine of the 100 free with indi-vidual champ Rosie Wennberg leading the way, and another 36 in the 500 with Nora Daly taking first and three more scoring in the con-solation finals. The result was a 227-147 lead for CE over the Rams and Morse of Bath sneaking into second with 155.
Cape took control in the 200 free relay as Daly, Heather Kraft, Emily MacDuffie and Wennberg blitzed the competition with a 1:43.39 to finish first. Bangor wound up sev-enth despite coming in as the third seed and Cape expanded its lead over the Rams to 96 points.
The Rams found themselves in fifth place after the first event (200 medley relay) and moved up to fourth after event three thanks to freshman Mariah Reading’s second-place finish and senior Brianna Theriault’s ninth-place finish in the 200 individual medley.
Sanford’s Jenni Roberts was voted the performer of the meet after winning the 200 IM and the 100 backstroke (for the third straight year) and breaking her own state and meet record in the 100 back with a time of 57.69 seconds.
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